"Pig In a Pokes" - Your *worst* Model RR purchases ....

[jeffrey-wimberly]

QUOTE: Originally posted by TA462

QUOTE: Originally posted by HOScaleModelRailroader


Addendum:
I'm also including Walther's Trainline Alco FA-1s (Item Number 931-203) - most Trainline units I have run fine, quiet, and smooth. But these Alcos - total Walthers POS. I've got $15 LifeLike (pre-Walthers takeover) engines that run better.

Your in kind of a bad mood today eh? [:(]

Ouch! That's bad.

[Anonymous]

I would have to say my worst purchase would be a Walthers Grain Elevator. Half of the parts would not fit together so I just had to make up most of it.

[dinwitty]

I think a few purchases, but I knew what I was getting.
I bought an old Varnet F unit, the shell was old Zamac, and it was falling apart badly. Why did I buy it? for the frame and motor and assemble other varney units I have.
The shattered shell? I could put it on the rip track being cut up for scrap, or I even thought about selling it on EBAY explaining exactly why I would do so. It could lay at the bottom of a river as a happless accident...of course auction it at the minimum price, but you never know what the ebayer buyers might do...
sometimes the buyers are nuttier than you...

I was at a hobby show and one lady was selling of her deceased husband's stuff, and there was a UP 4-12-2, brass. 50 bucks. It was missing some side frame parts, I studied that and said..uh, no waitaminute.
The siderod parts would for me been a hard find. and it wasnt in the box. I passed up that buy.

In comparison, the best buy I made was the purchase of an ALCO models Virginian EL-2B, its a dual cab unit electric engine. The owner said the gears were stripped-split, which were noted a sad feature on these engines... 50 bucks. Sold!.
I fixed the gears putting NWSL gears on, they were slightly too small for the gear towers, so II ground the towers shorter, the gears meshed up, man it runs super!!!



thats the EL-2 on the left with other VGN lokies I have, EL-1 in the middle Jackshaft.

On Ebay these units are going 800 bucks or more. Sorry, not selling, gonna have fun with them.

[Anonymous]

Had a C&BT shops boxcar that didn't go together very well. Hmm... I didn't get this from a hobby shop, but had a Limited Editions Southern railroad combine that was terrible all around. After a couple hours of trying to assemble it, I just boxed it up, and let it rot in my closet. No wonder they're out of business...

[Don Gibson]

MY biggest horror Stories have come from Hobby PAINTERS taking on engines and returning them (finally) untouched.

One fellow moved to St Louis and took my engines with him.
Another picked up a set of 4 Hallmark diesels from a Hobby Store by using a forged authorization , and headed for TX where he sold them. He also scammed others. John Firpach was his name. (Beware).
3 other times - I got my stuff back after tracking them down, and employing threats from MR (re Ads) or their current employer.

My experience with the Athearn's new line is 80% fine, but 20% bad. The people with the 80% are happy as hell and the 20% saing "never again". So much for polls? .Those with old BB equipment can install 'sweet running' PPW's.

It's only Money . http://www.ppw-aline.com/custom_built_chassis.htm

[douginut]

My faux pas? My first and last purchase on E-Bay. Saw a "Bachmann Brill Trolley" runs good". bid got up to 12 dollars. I won. was 17 dollars with shipping. arrived. opened box.
found a little copy of the Bachmann "desire street trolley" with chromed freight trucks and peeling chrome wheels and NO MOTOR AT ALL. I called the seller, was threated with bad feedback if I complained. called E-Bay, "sorry they could not do anything ". Saw identical trolley offered with the same description by her several more times.
I now enjoy browsing E-Bay, but that's all.


Doug, in Utah

[tigerstripe]

July 1983, I made $5 for cutting the neighbors grass. After walking to the grocery store to swindle my fortune on Coke's and candy, I wasted $1.75 on a model train magazine instead.

Fast fwd 20 some years and thousands of dollars later. I have a nearly complete layout just like I always wanted. A friend at the club shows me his latest new toy. A BLI Pennsy M1a. I say to myself I will never pay that kind of money just for some noise.

Two years later, I have 5 of them, have tore down my present layout and designing a new one to accomadate my Pennsy steam fleet. I have also acquired close to 100 new cars to go with my engines, a growing stack of books and pictures.
This may not qualify as a worst purchase but it certainly is getting expensive.
Did I mention that I am to young to have ever seen steam, and have never lived anywhere close to Pennsylvania.

[jon grant]

Useless junk

Digitrax accessory decoder - £42.00 down the drain. I tried all ways to stop it setting its own routes.

Lens accessory decoders - keeps going into 'overload' when 2 different operators are on the layout

Rivarossi 0-4-0 steamer - runs like the clappers and rides the rails like a bucking bronco.

Mc Henry and Accumate knuckle couplers

plastic wheels


Jon

[gmpullman]

I sent a check for $450.00 to Resin Unlimited FOUR years ago for the "Edmund Fitzgerald" waterline HO kit that was shown in the Walthers Catalog for a while.

No ship, no answers to my request for a refund!! No nothing...

Anyone know how I can reach Jason Davis from Resin Unlimited? I'd sure like a word with him!!!
Ed

[Texas Zepher]

QUOTE: Originally posted by zgardner18

QUOTE: Originally posted by Texas Zepher

That's easy - Three very expensive Athearn Genesis SD70s.

You're Scareing me, I have three at home that are still in their boxes that I haven't had the time to detail and run.

That is exactly what I did with two of these. I bought them in the summer of 2000. They sat on the shelf until last summer (2005) when I bought the third. That is when I got them all out to run as a set and found out they all had warped trucks that wouldn't track at all. It was too late to take the two back. The third is the BNSF green warbonnet so it is retired to the display case as a static model. So get yours out NOW and make certain they work while you still take them back to the hobby store for replacement or refund.

[CP5415]

My worst purchase? My BB CPR F7. I bought it in this hole in the wall hobby shop. It ran like crap out of the box.
I gutted it & now I use the frame as a dummy for a B unit.

Gordon

[Anonymous]

I noticed a couple people mentioned the Spectrum Dash - 8 from Bachmann. Aside from hand rails being slightly misshaped I love it. Although my layout is mostly modeled in early 70's it5's kinda out of place.
I think my worst purchase would be the plasticville auto shop, that thing was WARPED I got it at a show too so I couldn't return it. Now I check ALL my show purchases.

[Benjamin Maggi]

Mostly everything by Testors is great, but I too bought a bottle of dullcote and used it on my brand new custom painted engine. This was after screwing up 2 shells of my own, and then sending it out... well, it came out poorly. Not due to humidity or other such things, just this weird gooey mess. Ruined my engine!

[jeep35]

A pair of Baldwin Sharksmade by ER models. Saw them in a store, had to have them, paid way too much for them, and they never ran right!

Jim

[amtrakjackson]

Bachmann Spectrum C40-8 and C40-8Ws. Front Range, E&C, and LBF cars with fictional and/or "close enough" factory paint jobs and crummy parts.

[stokesda]

When I first got started, I ordered some old, pre-owned Tyco and Bachmann freight cars off eBay, just so I could quickly and cheaply amass a bunch of cars. They weren't that expensive, but as time went by, I started getting more Athearn BB kits, then Accurail, and even have a couple of Branchline kits now. Now I look at the old crappy cars I started with and wish I had spent a little extra $ to get some BB's or Accurails instead.

Also, I spent a lot of $ and more time than I'd like to admit trying to repower/upgrade an old Bachmann 4-8-4 steamer, before finally breaking down and getting the Bowser kit for it. I balked at the Bowser kit at first because of the steep price ($70 + S&H), but when all was said and done, it would have saved me a lot of trouble and wasted $ if I had done it in the first place.

[Anonymous]

Lot of metal wheel sets off ebay. Seller stated "lightly used." Receieved the wheel sets and ever single one of them is worthless. Contacted the seller and he says, "hey I would still use them."

Only bad deal on ebay. Mostly people with diferent ideas of wear.

[Tilden]

A-Line well car set, purchased new. Most of the trucks were sprung and out of alignment. Constant derailments until I discovered the truck problem and replaced them.
Athearn SD70 MAC. That thing still doesn't run right.
Trainboy - my KATO SD 90 is sweet!

[Anonymous]

Depends on how one defines "worst". My biggest disappointment has been a Master Creations structure kit. I ended up with a decent-looking model, but only after tremendous efforts due to inaccurately cut parts. Overall, simply far from what one should expect from a $150 kit.

Another mistake was a Waltthers HO GP9M with chopped nose - no detail to speak of, obviously crummy plastic, terrible performance. I mail-ordered it because Walthers had it on sale for an incredible price, of course now I know why.

Finally, my one brass diesel - a Western Maryland BL-2. This is also my only "bad" E-Bay purchase to date (I've had four others with problems, but the sellers made good on them promptly and without argument). Paid $160 plus shipping. When it arrived, the front had been bashed in - I believe that the seller dropped it after taking the photos. Also, the motor was DOA in total contradiction to the seller's description. When I complained, the seller refused to take the unit back and responded that I must have dropped it and was trying to blame him. Yet on the other hand, he also sent me a $50 postal order "as a courtesy"; come to your own conclusions. He had good feedback on about 30 transactions but whatever the case, was no longer a registered user when I checked a couple of months later. I've been able to repair the body damage to almost like new but haven't tackled the re-motoring yet.

PS: No doubt some will point out that all my disappointments were with mail-ordered products. Wouldn't have helped me with the MC kit, and as for the other two, they represent less than 1% of my model rail mail orders over the years.

[whitman500]

I spent $350 for a new Proto 2000 2-8-8-2. Ran it a couple of times and then the decoder developed a problem (it stuck at scale speed of 1MPH). Tried resetting, changing CVs, etc. Nothing worked. Called up Walthers (who had just bought Lifelike). Took them a month to tell me that there was such a backlog of locomotive repairs that they couldn't provide any service under the warranty for 6 months. For this price, the service/quality should really be better.

I also once used Microscale Dull Coat. Worked terribly, spreading gunk all over the locmotive that I could not remove. There is nothing worse than ruining a new paint job because you bought a bad batch of sealant.

[cwclark]

I've had good luck with train show stuff but i'd have to say my worst purchase was 1. any tyco locomotives from way back when and 2. Athearn's GE U-33C locomotives...they still run but barely and they've always had a wobble when they do run...chuck

[rolleiman]

I know that feeling... Close to $300 for a hunk of plastic that by the look of it should easily walk off with 50 cars. My discovery that it wouldn't came when I was 'showing it off' [B)] one day. Runs great by itself though and if I get a good running start at that hill, it'll make it over with 15. One of these days I'll get curious and take it apart..

[twhite]

QUOTE: Originally posted by rolleiman

QUOTE: In my next life, I'm modeling a railroad whose steam locomotives will be mass-produced in plastic. I SWEAR!!

Suuuuuuuuuure you are!! [:)] Isn't that always the way with brass?? Looks great, doesn't run worth a [censored]. Worse part is, no two are alike..

Jeff--BWA-HAAH, you're so right! Actually, for someone who models a railroad whose scale model steam power availability is pretty much either brass or nothing, I've been pretty lucky, over the years.
But don't get me started on how my Proto 2000 USRA 2-8-8-2 (one of only 2 plastic Rio Grande prototype steamers on the market today) can't even haul 12 cars up a 2% grade without my little brass 2-8-0 running as a helper. Big, heavy hunker like that and all it does is spin its drivers and yell "Help me, help me" in a little tiny voice. Really embarrasing, LOL!
Tom[xx(]

[IRONROOSTER]

Bought a passenger car kit at a train show without looking through it. When I did later at home I found some one had started to glue it together then changed their mind and broke it trying to take it apart. Oh well it wasn't expensive and I may be able to fix it, if not, I can cannablize some parts out of it.
Enjoy
Paul

[Anonymous]

Mine was an E-Bay purchase of a 1960's vintage steam locomotive. Neither the picture in E-Bay or the description reflected the sorry state of the model. Plus it was shipped in a mailing envelope with a couple of layers of bubble wrap and no box. It arrived in more pieces than most kits I buy. I only threw away about $30 on that one.

[zgardner18]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Texas Zepher

That's easy - Three very expensive Athearn Genesis SD70s.

You're Scareing me, I have three at home that are still in their boxes that I haven't had the time to detail and run. I pray for all the money that I paid for them, that they run like they should. Truly, if not, then I will not buy an Athearn ever again.

[Anonymous]

The mechanism seems to be ok if I drop the axles out and run it using a couple of jumper leads - it's very smooth and quiet. Seems to be something wrong with either the axle gear or the gear that drives that. I'll dig it out again sometime and have another go at fixing it - I rather fancied the idea of a small On30 diorama but this thing is useless!

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Railroading_Brit

Probably a Bachmann On30 0-4-2 Porter. Pretty much every other Bachmann loco has been ok, apart from quartering and gauge problems on steamers. This thing seems to have a gear problem that makes it jump vertically once every wheel rotation. I've had it apart a few times and failed utterly to figure out the problem, so it sits boxed on a shelf. I had every intention of fitting one of the Backwoods Miniatures detailing kits but it's not worth spending more on a loco that doesn't run properly. Worst £30 I ever spent...

if its anything like my LLp2k bl-2, check the washers around the worm gears. little plastic SOBs that were somehow bent on the edge. these things neet to be cut and bent and tortured before they let go of the drive shaft. hit the gear housing, CLUNK! the torque pulled one side off the track, but it kept on rolling. it it did this about every foot or so. $40 wasnt bad, gave the guy $20 and a storage worn p42, not the greatest deal of all time, but at least i have an ok running bl2 to show for it.
GEARHEAD426
[8]

[Anonymous]

I bought brass turnouts at a trainshow because the price was right. Then I got tired of having to pu***he train everytime it went through one and replaced all the brass turnouts with nickel silver.

[jwr_1986]

The first locomotive I purchased was the Athear DD40 model in UP. I don't even like the UP I was just impressed by its size. Well it runs horribly and I have yet to tear it down and rebuid it into something decent. I might just get it running and sell it on ebay. The same way I got the thing (and overpayed for that matter).

Jesse